1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, an information processing method, and a computer readable recording medium stored with an information processing program. The present invention particularly relates to an information processing apparatus, an information processing method, and a computer readable recording medium stored with an information processing program used for a printing system in which a plurality of information processing apparatuses share a printer.
2. Description of Related Art
In a configuration in which a plurality of information processing apparatuses share a printer via a network, a server/client environment consisting of a server apparatus and a plurality of client apparatuses is constituted. In such a server/client environment, the server manager may restrict the setting parameters of the printing conditions that are allowed to be used by the users of the client apparatuses.
As to the technology for the server manager to restrict the setting parameters that are allowed to be used by the users of the client apparatuses, a setting process of the printer driver has been proposed as disclosed in the following Unexamined Japanese Patent Publication No. 2006-209292. The setting process disclosed in the Unexamined Japanese Patent Publication No. 2006-209292 is to display a special setting screen by activating the printer driver via a dedicated setting program. By specifying the attributes of the setting parameters via the special setting screen, the server manager can gray out (inactivate) certain setting parameters that are not allowed to be used by the users of the client apparatuses on the printing setting screen provided by the printer driver.
However, the abovementioned setting process has a problem that it is necessary to manage the dedicated application in addition to the printer driver as it is necessary to activate the dedicated application on the server apparatus side. Moreover, there are cases where the installation itself is difficult depending on the security condition of the usage environment in such a dedicated application.
Furthermore, there is another problem that the printer driver screen is not efficient as a user interface, as a large area of the printer driver screen is occupied uselessly by grayed out setting parameters in the configuration of the Unexamined Japanese Publication No. 2006-209292 in which unusable setting parameters are supposed to be grayed out on the client apparatus side.